I love other people's excitement about things. I find it delightful, and engaging. When that passion turns into an insistence that I will love thoseI love other people's excitement about things. I find it delightful, and engaging. When that passion turns into an insistence that I will love those things, that I must love those things, I get obstinately, irrationally resistant. I jokingly ascribe this to my trip through the 90's - that time of angsty music, angry plaid and baggy Levi's so weighted with indifference that they could hardly be bothered to hold onto our hipbones. The truth is, though (despite a lingering love of plaid), that I was never angsty, rarely angry, and enjoy being able to walk quickly without mooning anyone. What I am is consistently, habitually, nearly instinctually contrarian. It's honestly a problem, (albeit a fun one), and I've been working really hard at taming the urge, a little.
I was introduced to Moorcock by a rabid fan many years ago, and his persistent insistence that Elric was THE shit, that it would be heresy to call myself a fantasy fan if I didn't enjoy it...well, this pretty much guaranteed that I would read it with as much indifference or scathing disdain as I could muster. And so I did, and thought it just so much melodramatic tripe.
I was wrong.
This really is seminal sword and sorcery. The sheer imaginative power of the story is tremendous. I first read this coming off a rip of Martin, Jordan, and Goodkind, and the difference in worldbuilding is honestly remarkable. With grand but stark language, Moorcock manages to convey a richly envisioned world using only about 20% of the words that those other Purple Prosers use, and the reader is thrown in without elaborate explanations of how everything works. ( Though, there are some quirks in Elric, too - "The Warrior Priest Of Phum drew a red kerchief from within his tunic and blew his nose for some time. When he had finished he put down a hand, helped Elric to his feet, and began to walk along the rim of the marsh, keeping the black monument ever in sight" Wtf? I giggled a lot over this.)
It has the feel, often, of a fable or an oral tale, and the tone in which it is told stands up well despite the 45 years that have passed since it was first written.
I'm really glad I gave Elric another try, and wasn't purposefully resistant. I'm curious to see where his story goes from here....more
Beautifully heartbreaking, and beautifully hopeful.
I get picky when prose gets poetic. I find that I lean towards functional first - to read what a stBeautifully heartbreaking, and beautifully hopeful.
I get picky when prose gets poetic. I find that I lean towards functional first - to read what a story says - before I can begin to appreciate how a story sounds. Miller manages to write a fantastically gorgeous journey of love and solitude by 'renaming': he "arrive[s] at the nature of a thing by calling it something else." And it is wonderful.
Pico (a librarian who loves stories), goes on a great quest: to gain his wings and therefore the heart of his true love. The journey is episodically charming, terrifying, destructive, peaceful, odd and harrowing. It is filled with sad yearning and grand fulfillments and unexpected consequences.
It is lovely. It is sad. It is worth the trip. ...more
I'm not expecting to add anything new to the discourse on this much-reviewed book, but I've come to value collecting all the thoughts I've jotted downI'm not expecting to add anything new to the discourse on this much-reviewed book, but I've come to value collecting all the thoughts I've jotted down and cobbling them into something to share. Reviewing started as a very personal effort to read more intently, and the engagement that comes from sharing really cements it as a positive thing
The Night Circus is a book of gorgeous descriptions and wonderful wanderings. The setting – the Circus of Dreams – is such a lush achievement, and the skill of its creation is often strong enough to carry the experience of this reading high above the novel's sometimes shaky foundation. Indeed, the Circus itself is imaginatively immersive in a way that I rarely experience outside of fiction from New Weird (which I usually love) or Surreal (which I usually don't). It is not just absorbing, it's accessible without losing its magic. This is why I enjoyed the book with my heart, while my brain was very busy making objections.
Early in the third quarter, my brain won out for a while. I found myself wishing that if the novel was going to continue to insist on having a plot then it ought to damn well get on with it...either that or just stop bothering me entirely and let me explore the Circus in peace.
That's a lot to do with the fact that almost all of the characters deserved a higher word count. I had a tough time knowing them, so my investment in them wasn't terribly high.
And then of course there is that promising hook - dueling magicians in a mysterious circus! - that was never fulfilled. It is an intriguing premise, and is mostly ignored. Of course that's disappointing.
Despite this, my heart fell in love with the Circus of Dreams and that made this book a delightful affair. I don't think I'd risk a reread, but instead tuck this little escape into my reading life like a ticket stub in a journal, and remember it wistfully. I think we all need books like that....more
Michelle F
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Books:
fantasy
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